That made me lol. Seriously though you cant depend on the buyer to not snoop through your data and erase it. One hdd i bought was a refurbed drive fresh from the factory so there was no issue there, but a smaller 40gb portable drive i got wasnt and i didnt even think of trying to snoop, just loaded my own stuff on. Not everyone is that honest though, so if you do happen to have videos of you and the wife and they get leaked out in a situation like this its your own fault.

Personally i use wipe drive to zero drives, maybe a second or third pass just to feel more secure even if it makes no difference.

if you cant use the hwardware method, then go with 35 passes and leave it there till it finishes..might take a few days. if the drive is fine after that, then thats quite the stability test as well :)
the only thing is make sure its properly cooled, cooking for 2-3 days can damage a good drive.

One way or another, we all have to remember that most people here are honestly good people, there are plenty who will sit there beating off to your wife while selling your banking info to the highest bidder. We can't count on everyone being a model citizen.

Thats why I put the banking info on my Old HDD's from a Bank in Nigeria and the nakkid pictures are of 65 year old Russian Housewives that haven't seen a Razor in 20 years.
At least some small sense of humor of the poor SOB that decides to take a peak and ends up puking on his Keyboard while being afflicted by every Nigerian Scam there is.

Happy happy soul.

ST

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"We know not why he calls for us, only that when he does we must answer" - DMP 2009

"Dear Iceberg, I am sorry to hear about global warming. Karma is a bitch. Signed - Titanic"

I would rather believe and find god doesn't exist than to not believe and find that he does.

May seem a wee bit redundant, I am personally a fan of Boot and Nuke, but recently ran into an issue where it would not support a flash drive and also a WD 80GB HDD. So, i turned to the ubuntu live CD and used the shred command (as referenced here Tools to delete files securely in ubuntu Linux|Ubuntu Geek ) :

I'm not sure how good of a job it does, but the WD version of Acronis (Free DL from their website, will only run if there is at least one WD drive in the system) has a HDD cleaner option which offers many different methods of wiping the drive and defaults to the US DOD standard security mode.

Yes a single full erase pass will do for any but the most determined snoop. You can do a single pass using something like dban or use dd in *nix

Actually even the most determined snoop won't be able to get anything off of it. In my class (for computer forensics) we were talking about this very subject and they've tested this and we were told that even an electron microscope couldn't get any information after a single pass was done.

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Create something idiot proof and they will make a better idiot.
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